


Snippets and Shorts in Arcadia

by FabiusMaximus



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2019-08-11 03:31:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16467836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabiusMaximus/pseuds/FabiusMaximus
Summary: A room for snippets, one shots and probably never to be completed stories.





	1. Chapter 1

Claire kept her cloak wrapped around her body as she limped back to her apartment. Some people would point and stare. Other people would look anywhere but at her, and others desperately tried to pretend she was an ordinary girl.

Claire didn’t know which was worse. At least the sky was overcast, the New England air promising a storm by night.

Claire preferred the skies to be overcast. She didn’t like the sun any more.

Fortunately, the United States government, in belated recompose for the victims of the incident, provided them with enough welfare that they didn’t _have_ to work if they were willing to accept a very frugal lifestyle.

Claire was. It wasn’t as if she had anyone to impress any more. No family, no friends…

Nothing.

She fumbled at the lock of her apartment for a few moments, then opened the door and walked in. The apartment was Spartan. A bed in one room, bathroom with safety bars, a table and small kitchenette.  Behind that was her workroom.  Claire paused, undid the hasp of her cloak and tossed it to the side with her clawlike left hand.

She stared at herself in the mirror. The right side of her face looked… normal. The left side?  Her flesh had run like wax, her eye white and blind, the flesh of her jaw seared, teeth exposed and twisted.  Her arm was similarly twisted and melted, her fingers fused together.  The rest of her, under her clothes wasn’t much better.

Armor that could stop a troll did little against the fire of a newborn sun.

 

_Your fault, Strickler. So confident that nobody knew anything about the Janus order, that the authorities would be helpless. Or maybe Gunmar, who knew what would happen if the Janus order hadn_ _’t been destroyed._

But America had known, and if they didn’t have magic to stop the eternal night…

Well. Evidently a 400 kiloton fusion warhead would do just as well. They’d been fighting, trolls, Morganna, everyone, the sky turning darker and darker, and then some terrible premonition had caused Claire to look up, the staff suddenly _pulling_ her into the shadow dimension and dumping her out miles away from Arcadia.

Miles away, but too close, too close.  She’d barely had a chance to understand what had happened when there had been _light_ , no sound, just _light_ , the trees burning, her skin searing, even the metal of Merlin’s armor turning red hot…

The fact that she wasn’t blind was only due to the chance that she’d been turned partially away from the fireball, sparing her right side and eye. Her last sight from her left eye  forever preserved the hellish sight of Arcadia dying in fire in her mind.

As had everyone in the town. The fireball had actually _encompassed_ the center of the town. Jim, Toby, her family, Barbara, Darcie, Mary…

_Even Enrique._

Everyone she knew wiped away in a second. At least none of them had been on the fringes. They had all died _fast_.  The helicopters from neighboring communities had found Claire, half-mad, whimpering, stumbling across the hellscape, trying to get back to her friends. They’d taken her, and by some miracle, she hadn’t received a lethal dose of radiation.

“Miracle.” Her voice was raspy.  “Should you eat, Claire? It’s been a while.”  She thought. “No. Claire has a lot to do. Especially now.”

The trolls had gone into hiding, both friendly and hostile. Trollmarket had burned, the hearthstone had burned, and the lesson—that humanity would give hundreds of thousands of _their own_ to nuclear fire—had been well learned.  Most trolls no longer wanted anything to do with humans.

But there had been stories of the last surviving ally of the trollhunter, and Claire had used them to gain cooperation from some of the far-flung Troll communities. Not having to work had let her travel across America, riding cheap buses, sometimes just limping down the roads. She liked talking to herself. “Claire’s a good conversationalist.” 

And here she was now.  She walked into the back room. Tools. A horngazel, circle of mystic symbols.  Books, she’d spent the last five years digging up.

A spell.

A spell to go back and undo the horrors of the past.

“But should you, Claire?  The trolls are hiding, mankind is _safe_.”  She tilted her head, looking at a small mirror. “Don’t be stupid Claire. What would Barbara say?”

“I know she can’t say _anything_ now, she’s ash. But if she was _alive_ what would she say?”

“Yes, I don’t think she’d want to be dead either. So…”

She looked down at the circle, grabbed the tools and the cash she’d saved over five years,  slung the cloak over her body, and stepped into the circle.

The words were hard. They would have been hard for a normal throat, let alone one that had inhaled superheated air. But Claire had practiced. Claire was very good at practicing. Claire had wanted to be an actress. But Claire had more important things to do now.

She felt the pain, the anger of the universe at being told to do something impossible.

But then, with a sudden flare of light (but oh, so much more gentle then the terrible light she’d seen every second of her life for the last five years), the room seemed to shift…and Claire was gone.

 

* * *

 

The Evening was quiet in Arcadia. A flare of light appeared and then vanished, Claire stood, looking around at the city for a moment, almost afraid to move.

Then, she limped over to the side of the road, pausing as she stared at a newspaper that was being blown down the street  by the light breeze.  She grabbed it, read the date. 

Jim had just returned from the darklands. Vendel would still be alive. Trollmarket had not yet fallen.

“Who to meet, Claire, who to meet…” She murmured. “Trollmarket!” she nodded. “Jim doesn’t need to see Claire like this, he has _young_ Claire. They don’t need to know anything, I can just help Mr. Blinky and Vendel. Yes. Solve the problem, and young Claire never needs to know. Old Claire can go off and live somewhere else, or maybe Old Claire can still act. Old Claire would be great in horror!”  A raspy giggle sounded as she limped off, heading for Trollmarket.

 


	2. The Torments of Tantalus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes... Happy ending's aren't.

When Claire walked off with Jim, it was a match made in heaven.

And Claire thought so. But then, as the days turned to weeks, the weeks turned to months, she started noticing something else.

Oh, Jim loved her. No question about that. He was gentle when she desired it, strong when she needed it, and very, very passionate. 

And yet he never hurt her, never lost track of his strength. Some women went through their lives without a man like Jim.

But as the months wore on, Claire found herself realizing that he lived in a world she _couldn’t_ live in, not easily. In the days of the war, she was always on edge—and that protected her.

It was ironic that her worst injury underground came during peacetime— a friendly brawl that got out of hand, seeing a troll slam into Claire when she was focusing on shopping.

Blinky’s medicine managed to cure her shattered leg, and Claire spent most of the time biting her lip against the pain and convincing Jim to not murder her unwitting assailant (who was shocked and horrified that such a great warrior would be inconvenienced by such a little thing).

And it was then that she noticed the bruises. Up top, in college, her friends started wondering where she vanished to, and _they_ noticed the bruises.  One of them even brought her friend over, a _detective_ , to kindly tell Claire that she wasn’t the only woman who might be dealing with an abusive relationship, and that she should think about getting help.

What could Claire say? That they were merely the result of living in a realm full of animated rock beings, a world not designed for the fragile flesh of a girl, however courageous she was?

And Claire loved Jim, and he loved her. Even when it became plain that they would have no issue. Claire thought about adoption—but no adoption agency would even consider doing so without a full examination, and besides, if new Trollmarket could hurt _Claire_ , the defeater of Morganna, what could it do to a child? No. Mom would have to wait for grandchildren from Enrique.

The day she made that decision--that entirely logical decision, she told Jim she was sick, went to bed, and when she was certain nobody could hear her, sobbed into her pillow for hours, as she mourned the death of a dream. 

Claire took to wearing her armor. It protected her from bruises, but… Girding herself for battle just to go _shopping?_

Things got worse. At school, her grades were acceptable, but Claire’s dreams started to fade. There wasn’t time for a secret life, _and_ school, _and_ the extracurricular activities that were so important to your post-college career. But Claire kept up.

She kept going, even as her eyes started to gain shadows, and sometimes she stumbled or lost track of things, because trying to fit everything in was so difficult, but she couldn’t tell Jim—because he had given up _everything_.  She’d seen him, sitting back in the shadows, safe, watching the sunlit world and silently weeping for the touch of the sun that was so deadly to him.

Claire even went to Merlin, asking him, (secretly) if he could do to her what he did to Jim. Merlin refused. It turned out that without the amulet, the transformation would be less changing into a troll and more “melt into a screaming puddle of gore.”

And so Claire remains by Jim’s side. Realizes that a fulfilling life, be it in the sunlit surface or the underworlds may be forever out of her reach.

She never thought she’d ever find herself empathizing with Tantalus.


	3. The Nemesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's have some Evil Merlin getting his just desserts, shall we?

 

When Mike came to his mentor’s house he was shocked for a moment. It was empty, a few books lying around, but everything else, gone. Even the circles that Merlin had insisted must always be kept up were gone, the protective sigils on the walls looking like they had burned, charred into unrecognizable shapes.

“What…Merlin?” Mike called, a little out of breath. He’d been out of breath a lot since he’d been learning magic.

“He’s gone.”

Mike jumped in shock. Behind him there was a girl, wearing old fashioned clothing. She looked… About his age.

But there had been nobody in that part of the room, he was certain. “Who are you?”

“Claire. Just Claire.” She stood up, and Mike lifted his hand, his integrated scanner activating.

Then he blinked. “You don’t have a bodychip? But that’s ill—”

“They were long after my time,” she said softly. “Hold still.” Her hand lanced out and grabbed his hand, and it was cold, cold…

“What—”

Then there was an odd snapping feeling,and suddenly Mike’s chest felt a little better. “What did you do?”

“I freed you from Merlin. How do you _think_ an ‘immortal’ fuels his life, especially since Morganna no longer is an issue.”

“What, but Merlin’s a—”

“Hero? A wizard manipulating the world to make it better?” Claire smiled at him. There was something odd about that smile. Something cold and frightening. “Than why does he leave nothing but destroyed lives in his wake. Who are you, by the way?”

“Mike Wilkes! I’m Merlin’s apprentice.”

“Well, Mike Wilkes, you are his sacrifice, or were. That cold you have would never have gotten better.” She fell silent. “But you wouldn’t have noticed and had you noticed—well, crusades always have victims.”

“Who are you?!” Mike said.

“Did he tell you of the Eternal night and the Trollhunter of the battle with Morganna?”

“What were those? I mean, he said he fought Morganna and saved the world, but… none of that other stuff.”

Claire stared at Mike. Then she shook her head. “Why am I unsurprised. Merlin never would share the light with any others. No, Mike the Apprentice, there were others. Myself, my love, my closest friend and we, along with the trolls fought Morganna and Gunmar and victory was achieved at a terrible cost. Merlin had us leave for a new heartstone…”

“Heartstone?”

“A source of healing and magic for Trolls—and a way to keep their minds sharp rather than reverting to their animal ways. There are no more. But Merlin knew that. He sent us to New Jersey, where he’d heard tell of a new stone.” She fell silent, and once again, Mike was struck by how strange she looked. Then the girl started talking again. “I should have been worried. But I was happy, happy that my love, even if Merlin had _warped_ his body, would have a home, so I didn’t ask how someone who had been asleep for hundreds of years would even know what New Jersey was, let alone why it held a Heartstone. Maybe I was too busy being creeped out by how he _looked_ at me. If I had known what he’d done to Morganna, why she had been so brok—well, that’s over.”

“What happened?”

“There was no heartstone in New Jersey. The trolls had been as much his tools as anything else, and he no longer needed them—but didn’t want to risk being known for who he truly was. A week after we left, some of the trolls started getting irrational, animalistic. J-my lover, controlled them. Others became sick, delirious, claiming that something cold was sucking their lives away. We stopped in a cave, a safe place so that Blinky would be able to research the issue—and then Merlin vanished.

“And a few days later, we learned why. The last Heartstone had been destroyed, but it had always been doomed, from the moment he imprisoned Morganna in it. And with that, the trolls, _all_ of them were doomed, doomed to become animals, to die, to lose their minds. We spent a month in that place, hearing how Arr—how some of our friends had chosen to expose themselves to the sun rather than be a danger. How others had been killed when they _became_ a danger. Jim cradled his father in his arms when he turned to stone. Blinky’s last words were absolving him of his guilt. Jim needed that.”

Mike stared. She was relating it like she might the weather. There was something off about this girl.

But she was telling the Truth. Mike didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

“What happened?”

“Jim died, in my arms like his father had in his. We spent weeks down there, surrounded by the stone corpses of our friends, and I used every sorcery I could, but Jim died. I sealed the cave so that the bodies of my friends wouldn’t be desecrated by vandals or teen explorers and I sat with my love.”

“But you’re here…I mean, so you left.”

“No.” Claire said. “I did not.”

And suddenly, Mike realized what had been bugging him. Claire had only taken breaths when she talked. Other than that, she was completely still.

“I called upon the Powers that forged the earth in deep time, and swore that I would never move beyond the circles of the world, not until my friends were avenged, not until Merlin oathbreaker and kinslayer  had been cast into the void.”

Mike shivered. Because all of a sudden her clothes were turning translucent, her skin as well, revealing white bone underneath, and a pair of gleaming pinpoints of light stood in her eyesockets. The room was growing cold.

“And on that day,” the thing sitting before him said. “He will find that a truly huge number of people have preceded him and _will_ have their justice.”

“What about you?” Mike asked, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

“I?” Claire smiled, and suddenly her skin was back. “I will return to where my skeleton yet lies, holding my love, the man who would have been with me for a life, who would have fathered my children, the man who was _cheated_ out of his life, and I will hold him again, and then pass away. Who knows, if the Powers are Kind, I may see him again. But _I_ am the only one who can speak for the unjustly slain, and _I_ shall have justice for them, whatever the price!” She stood up and looked at Mike. “Now flee this house, Mike, for you are no longer apprentice, and count yourself lucky, for none of Merlin’s gifts come without a price. If you should see him again, tell him that Claire Maria Nunez continues to pursue him, and however long it takes, at the end of the road I shall take his immortality, his fame, and his very memory out of this world— _So I swear upon the Name of the Most High!”_

And with that, there was neither girl nor skeleton, but a terrible figure that Mike’s eyes reflexively avoided. To look at it, he somehow knew, would be death, or worse, and so he fled. Out the door, through the gates, onto his hover board—and before he hit the end of the street, eerie blueish flames were roaring up through the structure, hungrily clinging to every bit of wood and concrete.

Mike didn’t stop until he got home, the sound of sirens dim in the distance. He stared at the folios of “homework”  Merlin had given him, then shook his head and put them in the shredder. Tomorrow he’d go apologize to his friends that his teacher had been so oddly insistent about getting him away from.

But for tonight, he’d sleep, and pray he wouldn’t dream about a girl whose bones remained in the dark, but who still walked the earth seeking her murderer.


	4. Get Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why do the kids have to do it alone?

> “Merlin wants me to change my form, become a troll.”
> 
> The rest of his family promptly glared at Merlin.
> 
> “He has no hope of defeating Gunmar—he lost even to me.” Merlin dismissed their anger. “Would you lose this fight?”
> 
> “No. But I intend to  _stay human_ ,” Jim said. “My humanity is what has saved us, and maybe it’s time to invite some more humans to the fight.” He turned to Claire. “Claire, can you portal me to a location you see in a picture?”
> 
> “I…” Claire looked at it. She blinked. “Are you sure?”
> 
> “Checked the Internet today. I know where it is.”
> 
> “What are you talking about? Even an  _army_  of knights couldn’t save you from Gunmar!” Merlin snarled. “This potion is the only way.”
> 
> “We’ll see about that,” Claire said, and gestured with her staff. “Let’s go.”
> 
>  
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
> Colonel Jay M. Kannen had been finishing up paperwork on the LHA _USS Boxer_ , in the office reserved for the MEU’s commander. They were just off the West Coast, working up for another deployment, and that always produced paperwork, involving the care and feeding of the 2,000 odd marines and all the equipment they used. Then, suddenly, a black  _hole_  opened up in the far side of the desk and a…  _Kid_  emerged?
> 
> “The fuck?” Jay said, standing, staring at him. Then a teenaged girl, then another boy and… “The  _fuck?_ ” a batwinged monster.
> 
> “Greetings, Colonel,” the monster said.
> 
> “Hi, um… my name is James Lake Jr. “ The first kid said. “And, well, the United States is about to be invaded by a warlord who wants to eat humanity. Could we borrow your Marines?”


End file.
